"go array" as a blend between awry and astray

Yesterday on the radio, there was an interview of a child star from “Diff’rent Strokes” who got into drugs and then cleaned up his life and wrote a book about it. He said that despite what you might think, there weren’t many child actors who “went array”. I think it was a blend of going awry and going astray. Not common.

Jacko turns 50
He made the world dance to his numbers but he went array at one point of time in his career.

Re: "go array" as a blend between awry and astray

Heard this same slip at the kitchen table today. “Go array.” It may be just a misspelling, and it may be a blend. But I can also see a semantic nudging. To go awry is to lose one’s focus, to spread out (in an array) one’s objectives and results.